'No wrath of Men or rage of Seas| Can shake a just man's purposes: |No threats of Tyrants, or the Grim| Visage of them can alter him ;| But what he doth at first entend,| That he holds firmly to the end' (Herrick, 616). These lines were recited by Cornelius de Witte on the rack, and their repetition nerved Frederick the Great in his desperate struggle with all Europe (Ste.-Beuve, Causeries, 3.202). Socrates, who withstood the ardor civium in the trial of the generals of Arginousae, and ignored the threats of the instans tyrannus under the Thirty (Plato, Apol. c. 20), is the perfect type of that virtue of 'constancy' which Horace here celebrates as the tradition of the makers of Rome. propositi: purpose; Epp. 1.13.11, victor propositi. Caesar Bell. Civ. 1.83, has tenere propositum.
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Horace. Odes and Epodes. Edited with commentary by. Paul Shorey. revised by. Paul Shorey and Gordon J. Laing. New York. Benj. H. Sanborn and Co. 1910.
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